PP&L builders reach for Allentown sky, in historic pictures

A demolition crew topples a three-story building at the northwest corner of Ninth and Hamilton streets in Allentown.

Model T's sit along Hamilton as the frame for Pennsylvania Power & Light Co.'s 23-story building rises above the city.

Across Ninth Street from the PP&L construction site looms the "HB" water tower on the roof of the Hess Bros. department store.

These are a few of the 35 photographs that Robert Holden of Whitehall Township recently received from an Ohio friend whose father was the field engineer for the general contractor building the 322-foot-tall PP&L Tower.

The friend is John W. Hunter of Marion, Ohio. His father, Fred Hunter, worked with the top engineers and managers of the PP&L project from 1926 to 1928.

"That was my dad's big deal, the epitome of his engineering," Hunter said.

The prototype art-deco skyscraper opened its doors to the public 82 years ago Friday, three years before the taller but similarly styled Empire State Building opened in New York. PP&L became PPL in 2000. The Tower remains Allentown's tallest building.

Two months ago, Hunter mailed the photos to Holden, who was Hunter's childhood friend in Allentown, where they grew up on Whitehall Street. Holden then made the pictures available to The Morning Call.

Hunter said he doesn't know who took the photos, but they were his father's. He received them after his father's death in 1961.

The photos show the progressive removal of the G.R. Kinney Co. shoe store, the Cameron Piano Co., the Pergola movie theater and, at the corner, the Leh & Merkel drug store to make room for the PP&L building.

They also provide a glimpse of Annie Martin's three-story house on the south side of Hamilton Street, where the Holiday Inn is today. PP&L initially wanted to build on her property. But Martin was blind and, accustomed to the house, she refused to move.

Other photographs of the PP&L Tower's construction have been distributed widely. The 1930 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica included pictures in an entry that declared the structure "the best example of a modern office building."

Holden said he remembers watching the PP&L building go up. He was a month short of 5 years old when the building opened.

"I was interested in the steam shovels, the riveting," he said. "I couldn't give you a real account of it going up, but I saw the whole thing."

Hunter, who is a year younger than Holden, said he was just too young to remember the construction. But he said his father often talked about building the skyscraper and setting its 80-foot deep foundation.

Years after the PP&L project, Hunter and Holden joined the local Sea Scouts, the 1930s version of Explorer Scouts. As Sea Scouts, they were crew to a large lifeboat converted to a sailboat. The boat was kept at a Lehigh River boat house.

The Hunters left Allentown in the 1940s. John Hunter joined the Navy, and following his father's footsteps, took up engineering. Fred Hunter went on to do engineering work for public housing, schools and railroads in New York state and Connecticut.

Holden joined the submarine force during World War II. He was aboard the USS Finback when it rescued future President George H.W. Bush, a Navy pilot, after his torpedo-bomber was shot down.